Inside the Star

Mohamed Harkat denies links to terrorist groups

An alleged Al Qaeda sleeper agent emphatically denied running a safe house for Afghan fighters in Pakistan as he recounted his flight from his native Algeria to eventually seek refugee status in Canada.

Mohamed Harkat enters court in Ottawa to testify about the "nightmare" of being linked to terrorist groups. (Feb. 1, 2010)

By:Bruce CheadleThe Canadian Press, Published on Tue Feb 02 2010

OTTAWA–An alleged Al Qaeda sleeper agent emphatically denied running a safe house for Afghan fighters in Pakistan as he recounted his flight from his native Algeria to eventually seek refugee status in Canada.

Mohamed Harkat, 41, took the stand Monday at a Federal Court hearing to examine the validity of a rarely used security certificate against him.

The former Ottawa gas attendant and pizza deliveryman has been in limbo – charged with no crime but under threat of deportation – for seven years on secret evidence.

Two of the links to terrorist groups that have been alleged against Harkat involve a Peshawar safe house and ties to Ahmed Said Khadr, a known associate of Osama bin Laden and father of imprisoned child-soldier Omar Khadr.

Harkat flatly denied both.

"Your honour, I never worked for Khadr or went in his office" in Peshawar, Harkat told Justice Simon Noel. As for a Peshawar safe house, it "never happened," said Harkat.

Harkat's halting narrative was of a somewhat naive university student who fled his homeland in 1990 after lending a vacant family home to an opposition political party that ran afoul of Algerian authorities.

"For me it was like my nightmare started," Harkat testified.

Harkat then travelled to Saudi Arabia on a temporary visa but he was unable to work. Within days, a student contact put him in touch with the government-backed Muslim World League, which offered him a job in Pakistan, working at an aid warehouse that served Afghan refugees near Peshawar. But by 1994, Pakistan wanted the refugees out and the job ended.

In 1995, Harkat used $10,000 in savings to buy a fake Saudi passport and fly to Toronto, where he offered himself up as a refugee and declared his fake travel document. It wasn't until 2002 that he was arrested under a national security certificate.

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